When his brother refused to yield from jimmying the grate in the floor, Will began frantically thumbing and scrolling about Dylan’s phone.

“What are you doing?” Dylan shouted. He stood and lunged for the phone. The grate slipped from his fingers and clanged down viciously upon its frame. Before Dylan was able to yank the phone away Will had managed to bring up ‘Julie’s’ number from the call history. He pressed the Dial icon. A purling noise leaked through the phone’s speaker.

A beat later this noise was overpowered by a hideous buzzing that seemed to be emanating from inside the iron coffin.

The brothers were paralyzed. They stared into one another’s fear-widened eyes. Neither of them could bring themselves to face the buzzing casket. Again and again the phone rang. Even after Will dashed his brother’s device against that decaying red floor and saw it splinter, the casket continued to hum.

Dylan eventually gripped the coffin lid. It hit the floor noisily.

The bluish thing was wriggling. Dylan took up the homeowner’s chisel and began to tear the thing to pieces.

“No!” screamed Will, though he was unsure exactly why. Rushing up alongside his brother, he peered over the rim with its arcane etchings and looked at the pristine mutilation.

The livid wax curled back in ugly whitish rinds and rained down in clumps as Dylan continued to slash and twist and gouge. Though merely an effigy, its autopsy made Will’s stomach flip. He watched the torso part and smear as his brother fished out the vibrating phone, which went still and silent the very instant it was freed from its host.

Now it was Will who began wresting free the floor grate. Dylan simply shuffled past him. Though he averted his eyes from the carnage, Will dutifully collected phone, carcass, and casket, dropping each in turn into the pipe. He heard them splash when they struck the watery base that was churning somewhere below.

He then ran as he had never run before. Outside the rain flailed and swept like great shapeless wings. Will wended the length of the raging creek, his feet puncturing the sucking clay that seemed to be slipping into the moving current moment by moment.

His relief at spotting Dylan up ahead was immense. He shouted his brother’s name, but the storm swirled his voice into its cacophony, muzzling it. Dylan was leisurely sauntering along the bank, whereas he was running full measure. Will could not seem to close the gap between them. Time and again he cried out for Dylan but received not even a backward glance.

His frustration and fear ascending, Will took up a rock and hurled it at his brother’s back. But before the stone could strike him, Dylan veered dramatically to his left.

The gate to their yard was still hanging open by the time Will reached it. He passed through and made his way toward the back deck.